How Labour's immigration policy led to genetic tragedy

It’s a strange irony that mass immigration, which is supposed to bring us diversity, has led to a massive increase in inbreeding.

Multi-cultural Britain was meant to be a Benetton advert of ethno-diversity, a new population as beautiful and colourful as that of Brazil, but hopefully without the massive levels of violent crime, inequality and squalor.

Instead, where once inbreeding and its related genetic problems was exceptionally rare in England, it is now commonplace; where this country was once a nation of mongrels (albeit pasty-faced ones), now we have plenty of thoroughbreds.

Bradford is a veritable human Crufts, with over three-quarters of the city’s ethnic Pakistanis marrying their first cousins, and this figure is not hugely above the national average of 50 per cent. Compare this to the percentage of British-Pakistanis who marry whites, 0.7 per cent, or British Hindus, just 0.1 per cent.

As she writes: “We know the children of first cousins are ten times more likely to be born with recessive genetic disorders which can include infant mortality, deafness and blindness.

“We know British Pakistanis constitute 1.5 per cent of the population, yet a third of all children born in this country with rare recessive genetic diseases come from this community.”

“In South Asia the custom keeps family networks close and ensures assets remain in the family. In Britain, the aim can be to strengthen bonds with the subcontinent as cousins from abroad marry British partners.”

And yet politicians, who can spot a “public health disaster” from a mile away if it requires taxpayer’s money to deal with it, have been strangely silent on this issue.

Aside from the heroic Ann Cryer, MPs with south Asian populations have been reluctant to say anything, and only one of the 30 (mostly Labour) MPs Ahmad approached agreed to speak, anonymous. Likewise the BBC, strangled by its fear of doing anything controversial, has left it once again to Channel 4 to fulfill its public remit to discuss the questions no one wants to hear.

But what can be done? Some suggest banning cousin marriages, but personally I’m reluctant to sacrifice yet another freedom at the altar of diversity.

Marrying a cousin has never been illegal in England, although the Church has always strongly disapproved and made it extremely difficult for kissing cousins to wed (unless they were aristocrats, and powerful enough to acquire a dispensation).

It would be much fairer, although politically difficult, to reinstate the primary purpose rule that Jack Straw so foolishly (or cynically, I’m not sure) abolished in 1997. Straw made it easier for Pakistani and Bangladeshi-British families to force their sons and daughters to marry relatives from the old country. It had the disastrous effect of causing ethnic minority populations to grow at unstable rates in cities such as Birmingham and Bradford and has retarded integration by turning minority communities into virtual colonies.

But from a liberal point of view, they also allow mere girls to be forced into marriages with older men from a vastly different culture – little wonder, then, that the suicide rate for Asian women is four times that of their white sisters.

This is a tragedy for the young women, but also for their children’s health, since over 90 per cent of transnational marriages are between first cousins.

The Tories promised to bring back the rule in 2000, and were savaged as “racist” by the press, but it’s quite the opposite. For as well as helping to improve community relations and giving British girls greater protection from prison-marriages, restricting these largely cousin marriages will promote genetic diversity. What could be more progressive?